So what does this term mean? Karm sanyas.
Karm, as you know, means actions, duties. And sanyas means to renounce. So karm sanyas means to renounce worldly duties. And karm sanyas sadhana is the sadhana that we must practice in the privacy of our home, in our daily life.
When you practice karm sanyas sadhana, you must, therefore, renounce all worldly duties and activities. You must take all worldly relations, duties and objects out of your mind. The only thing to remember is that Shri Krishna is my beloved Lord and Master and I am his servant. In other words, a mind must be emptied of the world and filled only with thoughts of Shri Krishna.
And then we must take such a mind to an isolated place. In other words, we must sit somewhere where we are sure to be alone. Privacy is of the utmost importance in the practice of devotion. Why? Because we can only practice devotion in private. As the Gita says,
विविक्तसेवी लघ्वाशी…।
Vivikta-sevī laghvāśhī…- Gita 18.52.
“Practice devotion in private.”
Why? Because our mind is so mischievous, so turbulent. That if we start practicing, if we try to practice devotion in the midst of people, our mind, which is already so impetuous and so rash, will become even more so. And our goal in the practice of sadhana bhakti is to take our mind away from the world in order to concentrate it on God. So what is the process? What is the scientific method behind it? How can we accomplish this? Let us understand through a wonderful example.
Let us say that you have some milk and you add some water to it. Now the water will get mixed with the milk and they will become one. They cannot remain separate. And yet there is a way that milk and water can remain separate. How? Make butter out of milk. So what is the process of making butter from milk? First, you'll need to make yogurt from milk. And then you will need to churn this yogurt and make it into butter. Now if you take this butter and put it in water, it will float. It will remain separate from the water. As long as it was in the form of milk, it could not do this.
Similarly, our mind can be compared to milk and the world to water. When we mix our mind, in the form of milk, with the world in the form of water, the world enters our mind. In other words, we become absolutely absorbed in the world.
So for this reason, we need to practice devotion in private as well… especially in private.
